When I first entered high school, I was placed in a level two math class. (In Ledyard, the classes are leveled, with three being the lowest achieving students and one being the highest, with the exceptions of a few courses that have corresponding AP classes.) I have always thought that math was my strongest subject, so when I found myself in a mid-level math class, I was completely confused. Many of the students in the class were sophomores or juniors, and students rarely paid attention. The class moved so slowly in covering material, that I could tune out lessons entirely and still be ahead. At the end of the semester, when we took our finals, we were allowed to have a notecard for a cheat sheet to use on the test. I didn’t need, nor did I use one. My sophomore year, I was placed in the same level again, because I did well freshman year. By the end of the year, the teacher told me that I didn’t belong in the class, and the next year I was put in level one. For once, I had to actually pay attention during math class in order to understand the material. The level one class was somewhat challenging, but not too much. The next year (my senior year), I took AP AB/BC calculus. This was the most difficult class I would ever take in high school. It was a struggle to keep my grade up due to not being organized, as we would often have homework quizzes. I had to actually do homework every night in order to know what was going on in class. The class was very quickly moving, and we completed the AB portion of the class by November. I did not do well in the class. But I actually cared and felt like I was learning something. I didn’t put as much effort into the class as I should have, but the effort that I put forth was more than I had ever done before. As far as high school English goes, I was always in the highest level English course. That didn’t necessarily make it a good class. In tenth grade, I had the worst English teacher ever. Very few people who went to my school had good reviews of her. (An older boy told me that on the first day of class, she told him he wasn’t smart enough to be in her class because he had a disability.) Any time certain students tried to participate in class discussions, she would get upset. The teacher wanted us to write sentences for the vocabulary words, however she would never read the sentences. I found it completely useless to put all this effort into stories that the teacher would never even read. How would I know if I was using the words correctly or not? After a string of partially incomplete homework grades, this little act of rebellion began to show in my overall grade, and I eventually began to write the sentences, but not without telling her first why I wasn’t doing them. At the end of the year, when we received our graded thesis papers, she called me to her desk after class and told me to my face that she was surprised that I didn’t plagiarize my paper, and that I got a good grade.
As far as high school English goes, I was always in the highest level English course. That didn’t necessarily make it a good class. In tenth grade, I had the worst English teacher ever. Very few people who went to my school had good reviews of her. (An older boy told me that on the first day of class, she told him he wasn’t smart enough to be in her class because he had a disability.) Any time certain students tried to participate in class discussions, she would get upset. The teacher wanted us to write sentences for the vocabulary words, however she would never read the sentences. I found it completely useless to put all this effort into stories that the teacher would never even read. How would I know if I was using the words correctly or not? After a string of partially incomplete homework grades, this little act of rebellion began to show in my overall grade, and I eventually began to write the sentences, but not without telling her first why I wasn’t doing them. At the end of the year, when we received our graded thesis papers, she called me to her desk after class and told me to my face that she was surprised that I didn’t plagiarize my paper, and that I got a good grade.